Until March 18 293 Tenth Ave between 26th and 27th Streets, 212-563-4474 A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, February 16, 2006 Sometimes, unexpected context can give the requisite jolt that leads to aesthetic discovery. Paul Kasmin’s Chelsea gallery, with its exposed concrete ceilings and whitewashed walls, usually plays host to…

Until January 21 530 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues, 212.929.2262 Merlin James’s painting, “Flower Piece” (2001), is almost a manifesto of a will to evade categorization. It hangs in a show spanning twenty years of his work at Sikkema Jenkins, his fourth with these dealers. At first it looks like a dashed-off,…

WHY THEY WENT WILD FOR THE DIVINE SARAH Alphonse Mucha, color lithographs, from left: Tragique histoire d’Hamlet, 1899; La Samaritaine, 1897; Lorenzaccio, 1896. When “the Divine Sarah” died in 1923 a million people lined the streets of Paris between the Madeleine and the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt to see her cortege wend its way to Pere-Lachaise: An impressive turnout…

David Zwirner Gallery until November 19 525 W. 19 Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, 212-727-2070 A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, October 20, 2005 Luc Tuymans is difficult to like and harder still to ignore. Which is exactly as things should be for an artist who puts alienation at…

PHILIP PEARLSTEIN Betty Cuningham to October 22 541 West 25 Street, between 10 and 11 Avenues, 212 242 2772 DANICA PHELPS: WAKE Zach Feuer to October 1 530 West 24 Street, between 10 and 11 Avenues, 212 989 7700 A version of this article first appeared in the New York Sun, September 22, 2005 Philip Pearlstein…